For players who are eagerly awaiting the release of World of Warcraft: Classic in a week, some players might be waiting even longer just to log in when it goes live. Blizzard, via a forum post, cautioned players who signed up for the Herod server that overcrowding could cause 10K player queues just to play in the World...of Warcraft.
Via Blizzard's post:
Based on name reservations so far, the Herod realm is looking to be massively overpopulated. If all existing players on this server remain there, login queues in excess of 10,000 players are a certainty, and possibly much higher than that.
Blizzard opened up the Stalagg realm and is urging Herod players to move there to alleviate the crowding that could be an issue on Herod. While they can open more realms if needed, the team have mentioned that they'd rather Stalagg fill first.
While we are able to fit several times more players on a single realm in 2019 than was the case in 2006, we are not going to raise that cap any further, even though we have the technical capacity to do so. Raising realm caps would simply forestall the problem, letting more players in at launch but creating an unsustainable situation down the line, with severe queues when we turn off layering permanently before Phase 2 of our content unlock plan.
Blizzard also mentioned for players to note that realm population estimates are now based on that increased capacity, stating that a Medium populated realm already has more users today than even the most crowded realms back in 2006 ever did.
